ADS-L Digest - 21 Mar 2014 to 22 Mar 2014 (#2014-82)

[Laurence Horn]

On Mar 23, 2014, at 1:17 AM, David Bowie wrote:

> From: Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> Subject: Re: buoy [boy] ~ [BOO-ee]
>>
>> Singin' in the bath tub
>> Singin' for joy
>> Livin' the life of Lifebuoy
>> Can't help singing'
>> 'Cause I know
>> Lifebuoy really stops
>> B.O.
>>
>> A singing commercial from the '40's, before it had ever occurred to any
>> US-Anglophones that there was a reason to distinguish "buoy" from "boy" any
>> more than there is a reason to distinguish arbitrarily among, e.g. "mete,"
>> "meet," and "meat," simply because they aren't spelled the same.
> FWIW, i (b. 1970, born and bred Southern Maryland) have always
> pronounced 'buoy' as [bu.i], but i have always pronounced 'lifebuoy' to
> rhyme with 'toy', so i don't see this advertisement as knockdown
> evidence for the pronunciation of 'buoy'.

Ditto for me.  Life-boy soap but ocean boo-ie.

LH (NYC, b. 1945, summers spent in Long Beach, NY from 1950 among the boo-ies)
>
> Also FWIW, my last name is pronounced like my pronunciation of 'buoy',
> and not like either 'boy' or the last name of the rather more famous
> person with the same name (at least as far as spelling goes).
>
> David Bowie
> [de.v?d bu.i] (at least when i'm feeling formal enough that i avoid
> diphthongizing my tense vowels hardly if at all)
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org